17 Comments

Congratulations guys, you are awesome!! Can i suggest to talk in the podcast about smartphone displays? Or even better, write, if possible, a piece about a shootout between smartphone displays? For example it would be great to compare the screen of iphone 5, htc one, asus padfone 2 (IGZO, touch response time 65ms), note2/gs3, droid dna, nexus 4/optimus g...wouldn't it be great? The comparison could coverage visual angles, contrast, birghtness, vibramcy, outdoor visibility and CAN YOU PLEASE ME IF YOU CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 720p and 1080p on smartphones? I only trust anandtech so it would be great to hear your opinion...these are only my suggestions, consider them :)Reply

After having followed the rumors for a long time they were pretty much dead on, with the exception of it having 8GB GDDR5 rather than 4 which was a nice surprise. If the Durango rumors are similarly true, it will have not only as much RAM,but much faster RAM than the DDR3 in Durango as well.

The unified pool of memory will be good for passing calculations between CPU and GPU, from what I gather the big limitation to real GPGPU work was passing things between two distinct pools of memory. With one pool both will be able to manipulate the same data without having to pass it back and fourth. GDDR5 may not be ideal for the processor due to its higher latency than DDR3, but that's probably a small detriment in the face of what it will help with.

8 Jaguar cores doesn't sound too bad either, no they don't compete with what we have on PCs, but they'll still likely run circles around the limited Cell and Xenon architectures. And since the OS will have a separate ARM chip running it and there is an dedicated sound processor and video encode/decode hardware, all the Jaguar cores can be truly dedicated to the game.

And the GPU seems good for a console too, not the highest end, but something close to a Radeon 7850 (judging by the 1.84 Tflop number and the GCN architecture) is a huge boost over the cut down Geforce 7800 in the PS3.

I'm excited that console ports for PC will finally move forward, at the very least. Reply

Regarding Intel in consoles, I think there's a reason both they and Nvidia never kept their console partners long. AMD and IBM licence out their chips and allow the console manufacturer to shrink and modify them as needed, Nvidia and Intel maintain tight control. Microsoft got screwed with the Xbox 1 when Nvidia wouldn't shrink it when they wanted. Similar things happened with the PS3. No one partnered with them twice. And now AMD is in all three 8th gen consoles.

A 3 GHz modern Intel architecture in a console would be awesome no doubt, but I'm sure AMD is willing to go much much lower on margin per part considering their situation.

Console makers have to take each change in cost very seriously, a 10 dollar increase from one chip to another spread through tens of millions of consoles is a big hit for any company. I think a modified 8 core jaguar was a fine choice, all considered. Reply

I had missed the PS4's unified memory architecture -- GPGPU performance is all about managing the memory access between the GPU and main system, and of course a unified architecture makes things way easier.

Good win for AMD's unified compute strategy.

Regarding OpenCL on nvidia Titan, that problem is just the Windows drivers, right? Linux would get drivers similar to what the Titan supercomputer team has developed?Reply

I agree wirh ultrapixel stuff...but in an era of ultra hi res displays on mobile defice..4 mpx is enough? I mean a nexus 10 display is 4MP..if i want to zoom in a little to see a face in a photo i would immediately see pixelation? Maybe it would have been better to have a 5-6 MPx sensor, am i wrong?Reply

Great podcast! I'm not really that up to date in the mobile space and don't read reviews much, but I still really like hearing the podcast! One suggestion that I have is that Brian could maybe use a few less abbreviations/technical terms or give a short explanation. He for example talks about actively tuned antennas but I don't really get what That means in practice. I get that a metal backcover makes it necessary, but is that better or worse than regular antennas with a plastic cover or not? Also, the different classes of LTE? Or the Verizon rant, what are they doing wrong, using CDMA? And how could they change this in the future? And is T-mobile really an option? I got terrible mobile data performance on my US iPhone 5 and a prepaid card (4G pay by day plan) in California, less than 1 Mbps on 4G, or around 0.1 Mbps on 2G, no matter where I was. I've seen you guys recommend T-mobile prepaid, but is it just that area dependent?

Also, you forgot to include Ryan in the featuring byline!

Sorry for making this sound like a rant, but this brought up a lot of questions for me!Reply

Can you please address smartphone battery life? Who cares about 8.6mm thickness when the phone only lasts a few hours during actual use? The DROID RAZR MAXX set the standard with a massive 3300mAh battery in a 9mm thick phone. IMO that should be the bare minimum. Then 5050mAh in 11mm, and 6600mAh in 13mm.

There's no question a lot of people would be willing to sacrifice thinness and PPI for a larger battery. Here are some recent quotes from the comments sections of the recent HTC One article on Anandtech, and the GS4 and HTC One articles on Dailytech (all articles are dated Feb 19):

"I really hope they work on battery life...maybe this rant should be at the battery makers...damn energizer bunny."

"I think an S3 Maxx (thicker with larger battery) would be popular with a lot of people. It would have the potential to be their 2nd or 3rd most popular model. It makes sense to me. Everything else has gotten amazing and battery life has remained mostly the same."

"What I would want most is better battery life, minor improvements in video resolution, and better sound quality through the speakers. "

"I'm an extremely heavy user and my galaxy nexus can burn through its battery very quickly, its my main gripe with it. It is also one of the key features I will be looking for in my next phone. I don't need more processor speed, focus on giving me better battery life."

"need to see battery Tests."

"Well, I'm fine with 720p in a 4.7" screen but the battery is the key. If it's not at least a full day battery, then there's no point."

"That User Experience is horrible! Give me the option to double the battery size (Motorola got the idea with the MAX), I'm willing to take the size/weight consequences."

" Now, if they just improve the battery life we have a home run."

" All those updates to the tiles keep burning battery. As for the battery, it needs to be larger. Phones do not need to be so thin you can shave with them. The DO need to last all day (with all day use). I don't think this is "the" phone for me but I hope HTC uses some of these features in future phones (a max battery version would be nice)."

"All these sacrifices for silly 1080p marketing gimmick nobody will distinguish from normal distances. Maybe in one year or two, some OEM will say that PPI race is meaningless and they will give 2x battery life instead. Ironically, HTC did the same with this phone with their camera MP count."

"I'd rather have a larger battery, sane front buttons (HTC logo in the middle, whut?), microSD card, and definitely require inductive charging. I also have no interest in a 1080p screen on a phone. It's a phone. You do not need or want a 1080p screen. You may think you want it, but in reality it just adds a bunch of cost and battery drain, for a very pointless difference over 720p."

And my own comment:"Until smartphone battery life during ACTUAL usage at least DOUBLES (let's say 16 hours, to allow for human sleep/phone charging for the other 8 hours of the day), there will be LOTS room for improvement. I look forward to that day."

I find it interesting that you guys keep talking up HTC. My wife had an HTC inspire not too long ago and the voice quality was dismal. Apart from that there was nothing that stood out about it, good nor bad.

As someone who will be making their first plunge into the smart phone realm soon, I'm really only concerned with voice quality. Everything else is just icing on the cake for me. That being said voice quality seems to be something that is generally glossed over in most reviews. At most it gets a "yeah I called someone and they said my voice sounded like this or that."

I've never had a Samsung device give me outstanding voice quality either, of course that was with models from quite a few years ago. With all this positive talk, you guys have me second guessing my initial write off of anything HTC.

Can anyone give me input on whether voice quality has improved for Samsung devices over the years or HTC since the days of the inspire?Reply

I cannot answer your question, but I'd be really curious if you could ping back in a couple of months if you still think voice quality is the most important factor in purchasing a smartphone. I suspect your usage model is going to change dramatically after switching from a featurephone.Reply

With AMD supposedly providing the GPU for all 3 next gen consoles and the CPU for 2 of the 3, one thing I haven't heard discussed at all is the effect this is going to have on AMD's bottom line. They've got to be getting a huge licensing/royalty stream from this, right? Right?Reply